Her Three Protectors [The Hot Millionaires #3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (5 page)

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Don’t you need to know…I mean, you must have questions?”

“They can wait until tomorrow. I just need to know one thing. Do you trust us now?”

“We wouldn’t have done what we just did if I didn’t.”

“Then we’ll sort everything out tomorrow.” He brushed a hand through her hair. “You do know that we’re doms, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know that.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to submit to us, but it looks like we might all be together for a while. I get the impression that whatever’s going on with you, it won’t be fixed overnight. If you wanted to—” He paused to drop a kiss on the top of her head. “Your choice. We’ll help you whatever you decide.”

“I’ve never been with more than one dom before.”

Troy chuckled. “Baby, you don’t know what you’ve missed. Now get some sleep. We’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”

Troy slipped out of bed just as the sun was coming up, leaving Porcha sleeping peacefully. He’d fucked her twice more after their first encounter. She refused to go to sleep unless he did, and since he was at least as keen to give his cock as she was to receive it, it was a no-brainer. Now that she was finally asleep, he tried not to disturb her as he pulled on his pants and quietly opened the door. Beck sat in a chair directly outside and raised an ironic brow at Troy’s dishevelled state.

“Some people have all the luck,” he grumbled. “Do you know what it does to a guy, sitting on guard duty while his mate spends the night getting laid?”

Troy chuckled. “Duty’s a bitch.”

“How would you know?”

Troy shrugged. “Whatever the client wants.”

“Yeah, I get that part. What I don’t get is why you always seem to be the one to deliver.”

“Anything unusual?” Troy asked.

“Other than the noise you two were making.
Oh, Troy, fuck me harder.
” For once, Beck wasn’t laughing. “What’s going on, Troy, apart from the obvious?”

“We’ll find out when Porcha joins us. All I can tell you is that her husband’s apparently dead.”

“Dead?” Adam joined them. “When?”

“We didn’t get to talk about it.”

“Yeah, we know.” Adam rolled his eyes. “We heard your conversation all over the apartment.”

Troy spread his hands. “What can I say?”

“Probably better to keep it shut,” Adam advised.

“Will she play with us all?” Beck asked.

“I think so.” He nodded to the door he’d just come through. Porcha stood there fully dressed, her hair damp from the shower. “We’re about to find out.”

“We need caffeine first.” Adam, the self-appointed gourmet of the group, headed for the kitchen.

“Morning, Porcha,” Beck said amiably. “Sleep well?”

She smiled radiantly at Beck. “Eventually, when the boss man let me.”

“Hey who made Troy the boss?” Beck complained.

“Well, all I can say is that he sure behaved like a leader.”

“He does that,” Adam said from the kitchen. “We let him get away with it because we don’t like to disillusion him.”

Troy wondered if the other two were as astonished by the transformation in Porcha as he was. Gone was the beaten, exhausted, and terrified woman of yesterday. In her place was a sassy, kick-ass ball of energy, hungry for action and—if he read her body language right—ready to fight back. If that’s what a few hours’ sleep and a good shag did for her, then sex ought to be a prescription drug.

They all drifted into the kitchen, lured there by the smell of fresh coffee brewing.

“There’s not much to eat,” Adam complained. “Just toast.”

“We only kept long-term supplies here,” Porcha said. “Sorry, guys. Didn’t exactly have time to stop off at the supermarket on the way.”

“No problem,” Beck said. “We’ve survived on a lot worse.”

“Is that man still outside?” Porcha asked, buttering her second slice of toast and lathering it with a healthy dollop of marmalade.

“Yep.”

The knowledge didn’t appear to put her off her breakfast. “Why hasn’t he tried to get in here?”

“Because he knows we’re here,” Troy told her. “He probably thinks we’re employees of your late husband. They’ll be waiting for us to go or for you to emerge outside. Either way, they’ll move today, so we have to get out of here before they do.”

“Unless we wanna hang about and find out who sent them,” Adam remarked.

“I rather supposed Porcha would know that.”

“Where will we go?” she asked, ducking the question.

Troy lifted a strand of her drying hair and smiled at her. “What happened? How did your husband die?”

Porcha licked her fingers clean of butter smears and sighed. So did all three men, struck by the guileless sensuality of the gesture. “We first met—”

“We’ll get the life story later. Just cut to the relevant bits for now.”

“Okay. He worked out of Miami. He had legitimate business premises there. Import, export.”

Adam curled his lip. “Yeah, and we know what he was importing.”

“We lived up the coast in Jupiter. Big house, high perimeter wall, electric gates, guards everywhere. I couldn’t go out without at least two men on me. Sal was petrified that I’d get kidnapped by his enemies.” She inhaled deeply, obviously getting to the business end of her story, but only hesitated fractionally. “About a month ago, Sal went to Mexico on business.”

Troy elevated a brow. “You didn’t go with him? I’d have thought, if he was so possessive—”

“Usually I did, yes. He hardly ever left me on my own, but this time he went with just a couple of his lieutenants. I’m not sure what was going on, but I’m pretty sure it was something big.”

“A large consignment?” Beck suggested.

“Possibly, but Sal had moved away from drugs, thank God. He promised me faithfully that he would.” She paused, looking at each of them in turn. “He’d got into smuggling precious stones instead.”

“Fucking hell!” Adam scratched his thigh. “Bit of a departure, wasn’t it?”

Porcha shook her head. “Not really. Everyone associates Sal’s name with drugs, but he’d become more of a facilitator. A middleman who found buyers for certain commodities, and the other way round.”

“That why he went to Mexico, do you think?”

“He’d gone to finalise the off-loading of his drugs business. He was selling up to one of his rivals.”

“He kept his promise to you,” Beck said.

“Yeah, sort of.” She grimaced. “Anyway, about two weeks ago, he was still away, and I’d been out shopping. I had my two regular guys with me. I didn’t dare to go out without them, even when Sal wasn’t there. He’d know, he always knew everything I did, and I’d have paid a heavy price for defying his orders. Besides, if the guys let me go against him, they’d be in for it as well.”

“A gilded cage,” Beck muttered.

“Anyway, we drove up to the house, and before we even got there, I sensed something was wrong. The gates were hanging open, and I could see men with guns swarming all over the grounds. My driver simply turned the car round and hit the gas. ‘No way are we taking you in there, Mrs. G.,’ was what Kevin said.”

“What did you do instead?” Troy asked.

“We went to a downtown hotel in Fort Lauderdale, and I tried to ring Sal but got no response. I was trying to decide what to do next when an e-mail came through on my iPhone, from Sal’s e-mail address.”

“Saying?” Troy prompted when her words stalled.

“Nothing.” She shuddered. “It was just an attachment with a picture of Sal’s dead body.”

The guys shared a glance. “I know this sounds like a dumb question, but are you sure he’s actually dead?”

Porcha reached for her iPad and pulled up the e-mail in question. “See for yourselves.”

The three of them crowded round the screen, staring directly at a picture of a man in his fifties with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, who might or might not have been Sal Gonzalez. Troy had only ever seen pictures of the guy, so he wouldn’t know, but presumably, his wife would. He was naked, lying in a pool of blood, staring through sightless eyes at the camera.

“Well, he looks dead.” Beck placed a gentle hand on Porcha’s shoulder. The joker of the pack could be surprisingly sensitive at times.

“But you’re not running because he’s dead?” Troy guessed.

“No.” Porcha rolled her shoulders, as though relieving them of a heavy weight. “Not long after that came through, I got another e-mail. It was anonymous, but it said Sal had told them before he died that I knew where the shipment was and I had three days to get it to them. They would be in touch.”

“What shipment?” three male voices asked at the same time.

Porcha lifted her shoulders. “I have absolutely no idea. Sal never discussed business with me, nor would he have told them that.”

“Even if he was tortured?” Troy asked gently.

“Well, I’d like to think not, but—”

“What did you do?”

Adam’s question saved her from formulating a more thorough answer.

“I checked into that hotel, shopped for a few clothes, and took the precaution of visiting a safe deposit box we had in a Fort Lauderdale bank. Sal kept a load of cash there in case of emergencies, and I figured this qualified as an emergency.” She sighed. “Three days later there was still no word from Sal, so I had to accept that he really was dead. I was still too scared to go home and thought I was safe in the hotel. I booked a suite with two bedrooms, and my two guys stayed with me.”

“Did they try their luck?” Beck asked, scowling.

Porcha shook her head. “They knew better than that.”

“Okay, babe, carry on,” Troy invited.

“Two thugs turned up on the third day, knocking on the door like they were expected. When Kevin opened it, they barged past him as though he was a scrawny nobody, and Kevin, you ought to know, is built like you guys.”

“What were they like?”

“South American, big, menacing, wearing dark glasses.” She shrugged. “I was too stunned by their appearance to take much notice.”

“Presumably, they wanted this mysterious shipment.”

“Yep, but I played dumb, said I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about.”

“You must have been petrified,” Adam said, gently touching her arm.

“I was but tried not to show it. I figured that they’d searched the house for whatever it was that was missing, and if it wasn’t there, they needed me in one piece to get it for them. In that case, as long as I played for time, I wasn’t going to die. I managed to establish it was diamonds they were after and said I thought I knew where they might be. I said to give me twenty-four hours.”

“And then you ran,” Beck surmised. “Sensible girl!”

“I didn’t run because I didn’t know where the diamonds are—”

“You ran because you didn’t know how the guys could have found you, unless one of your bodyguards gave you up,” Troy finished for her.

“Precisely.”

Beck shook his head. “No wonder you didn’t trust us.”

“You could have been followed when you fled from the house.”

“Kevin says we weren’t, but if he was the grass—”

“They could have traced you other ways.”

“I kept my cell phone off, didn’t use credit cards.”

Troy quirked a brow. “He trained you well.”

“We kept this apartment here in Tampa as an emergency bolt hole. Sal thought no one would think to look for us on this side of the state. No one, not even our most-trusted guards, knew about it, so how that man outside got onto me is a mystery.”

“Someone always knows about these things. Realtors, lawyers.” Adam spread his hands. “And money talks.”

“Yeah, well, I had a time of it getting here. I couldn’t rent a car or hop on a plane to anywhere without using a credit card, so I had to try and disguise myself and ride buses.”

“We need to get you out of here,” Troy said. “Those guys won’t hang about outside for much longer. Pack a small bag.”

“How will we get past him?”

Troy got up and peered round the blinds. “It’s Florida, it’s the weekend, and that’s a park over there.” He grinned at Porcha. “Go pack that bag.”

She returned a few minutes later. “Do I need the wig?”

“No, just a ball cap and shades oughta do it.”

“That I can manage.” She produced a cap, squished her hair beneath it, and put on glasses that covered half her face. “Just like a million other women in Florida.”

“Not quite.” Adam’s gaze lingered on her breasts.

“Can I have my gun back?”

“Only if you promise to shoot Troy this time.”

* * * *

Beck produced the S&W, watching her as she stuffed it in her purse.

“Okay, Beck,” Troy said. “Let’s lose our friend outside.”

Grinning, Beck pulled a phone from his pocket and dialled 911.

“Oh, hello,” he said. “I’m with my daughter in a downtown park.” He gave the address. “There’s this odd-looking man hanging round. I’ve seen him talk to a couple of the kids. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, but I thought I ought to report it. You hear such terrible things nowadays.”